Remarkable story of serial killer's confidante

Until she was catapulted into the middle of the most horrific murder story of the 20th century, Janet Leach's toughest daily decision was what to give her five kids for tea.

Over 10 astonishing months, the 39-year-old divorcee volunteered, unpaid, to spend more than 400 hours in a remand cell with mass murderer Fred West. Often there was just the two of them.

It was a chilling encounter that was to have a huge impact on both Janet's life and my own.

I was reporting on the horrific events at 25 Cromwell Street, Gloucester, for the Daily Mirror. And from the hundreds of journalists covering the case and the trial of Rose West, Janet only ever spoke to me. We have remained good friends ever since.

And now in tomorrow's ITV1 drama Appropriate Adult, the terrible cost of her involvement with the notorious serial killer - and my own close connection to her - is shown for the very first time.

The film, which stars The Wire's Dominic West (as Fred), Oscar-nominated Emily Watson (Janet) and Stanley Townsend (as myself), does not dwell on the murders which horrified the world.

Instead, it focuses on Janet's struggle to do her job, care for her children and cope with the terrible secrets that Fred burdened her with.

Back in February 1994, Liverpool-born Janet was living in Gloucester and doing social work. As part of her job she had become an Appropriate Adult - someone who could be called upon by the police to sit in on their interviews with youngsters who were not represented by a parent, for whatever reason, to see there was fair play.

It was on February 25 that she got the call that was to turn her world upside down. Instead of sitting with a young offender, Janet found herself in a prison cell facing a 52-year-old man with learning difficulties - Fred West.

She spent hours alone with him before police arrived to interview him. And as he grew to trust her, Fred bared his soul.

He revealed a sickening catalogue of horrors that had taken place at his terraced home in Cromwell Street where he lived with his wife Rose, now serving life for 10 murders.

Astonishingly, as he unburdened his evil deeds during their conversations in Birmingham's Winson Green Prison, Fred fell in love with Janet.

Apparently she reminded him of his "only true love", nanny Anna McFall - who he had got pregnant and who was another of his victims. He later identified the field where she was buried.

Janet said: "Anna had been another of Fred's lovers, befriended when he was married to his first wife Rena. Fred talked about lots of girls and lots of affairs. But this one was different.

"His eyes shone when he spoke about Anna. He said that making love to her was the best thing that had ever happened to him and that if Anna had lived, he would be with her still.

"He always denied killing Anna. He told me this long story about how Rena and another man had 'taken her up the field and got rid of her'.

"I didn't believe him for a minute. How, then, did he know where she was buried?"

The gruesome, inhuman details about Fred's years of murder and torture that Janet was forced to listen to were not confined to their meetings in prison. He would phone her at her home four times a week. He even wrote to her from the cell where he hanged himself before he could be brought to trial.

Janet said: "Fred would tell me these horrible things as if he was discussing the weather."

One scene in Appropriate Adult recalls the time when I went with her to a deserted barn outside Gloucester where Fred had claimed there could be as many as 20 more victims buried.

She told me that Fred had boasted: "We used to go round to children's homes for some of them. We would give them a good time and they all enjoyed the sex. We used to tie them up. Some suffocated, we did not mean to kill them but we did.

"Some were hung up like pigs and their throats were slit. There was blood everywhere. We used to hang them up and leave them there."

Fred told her he was prepared to take the rap for Rose but claimed he was innocent of many of the murders. He believed he would walk free - and live with Janet in a caravan.

Sickened, Janet unburdened herself by talking to the Daily Mirror. She had been told she would not be called as a witness and that we could not publish anything from the interviews until after the trial.

But all that changed at Winchester crown court in the closing hours of Rose's trial. The prosecution decided that Janet must give evidence to counter a defence move to show Fred was the main instigator.

The ordeal proved too much. As she was cross-examined about her arrangement with the Mirror she collapsed and was taken to hospital, unable to speak. A stroke had left her temporarily paralysed.

For months Janet had carried the burden alone and now she had paid a terrible price. Up until Fred's suicide, she had regarded his sick secrets to be as private as the priest's confessional because "he told me the truth would come out at the trial". Now she told the police.

Janet, now 56, said at the time: "I could not cope with the things he was telling me... but I felt I had to carry it through even though I hated it.

"I wanted to get the bottom of how many victims there were for the sake of the families.

"I could not bear the thought that there was a child buried out there who would not be discovered because I had not listened to what he had to say. I will be haunted for ever by the things he told me. Now I wish I had never taken that 4pm phone call from the police.

"He did tell tales - some hard to believe. But you could not dismiss anything he said because the graves that were discovered were on his information alone."

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I IMAGINE most viewers tuning in last night to Appropriate Adult – ITV1’s drama about Fred and Rose West – immediately found it so uncomfortable and unpleasant they were forced to ask themselves two questions.